Clyde

There is a great website produced by Joan Vanderhorn and John Campbell on the history of Clyde. Naturally enough it's called A Clyde history and the website address is  https://www.earlyhistory4clydevic.com/index.html Joan and her brother John grew up in Clyde and in 1978 John wrote the book A Clyde History: Public Hall and Mechanics' Institute Jubilee to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Clyde Hall. If you have an interest in Clyde history or just an interest in the general history of the area then this is a great site.

Joan has also created the Clyde Victoria 3978-History blog http://clydehistory.blogspot.com - to accompany the website. The blog is more interactive and you can leave comments - plus it is easy to add content to so is more immediate. The Clyde website and blog are great examples of using new technology to promote history. Obviously Joan and John have a great knowledge of Clyde history and by creating this website and blog they are sharing it with the wider community. It's not only this generosity in freely sharing the information that I feel is really important but the fact that the website and blog are recording the life of a township that is undergoing massive change - farms are now being developed into housing estates. I know that change is inevitable but that's why it is important that people like Joan and John are prepared to record and share our changing history.

However, this change is not the first change in the history of Clyde - this came came with the coming of the Great Southern Railway which was opened through to Tooradin in October 1888. A station was built south of the original Clyde township and this effectively created two towns, the original settlement between Pattersons Road and Hardys Road and Berwick-Clyde Road and the new Railway town (where the existing town of Clyde is). The old town became officially known as Clyde North as from 1915 and the rail town became known as Clyde. To find out about the Schools, Halls, Churches and other businesses in both Clydes click here.
The Library has very few photographs of Clyde, but we do have a few aerials from 1981, which I have reproduced below. The top aerial shows the Clyde Cricket Ground, called the Lineham Oval, on the corner of Clyde road and Pattersons Road (top right corner), then following Clyde Road to the bottom of the photograph, where it intersects with Twyford Road. You can follow Twyford Road into the second photograph where you can see the Clyde township.

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